France, a Nation on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Meet the real French, and chuckle!The French are savvy, sophisticated, elegant - Right? Wrong! The French...* lecture the world about haute cuisine yet they eat more McDonald's hamburgers than anywhere else in the world* roll their eyes at foreign culture even as CSI is their most watched TV programme* pretend to be literary though Fifty Shades of Gray is France's best-selling book, everAlmost two decades ago Jonathan Miller moved to France. Soon he discovered the hilarious truth. The modern French live in a feverish state of fantasy. People are paid to pretend to work, pretend to strike, and generally think work causes depression and suicide. Dental hygienists are illegal, yet the French exchange a staggering 184 billion kisses every year. While preaching liberté, the State forbids everything, is run by one school's alumni, messes up over two thirds of the economy. It goes on....

Jonathan Miller writes for the Spectator and Sunday Times. His Languedoc village of 2,500 inhabitants overwhelmingly elected him to their local council in order to introduce some Anglo-Saxon common sense - or so he thought...